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Submitted by The Evergreen State College

Three Geoducks received 2025 Thurston County Sports Awards during the eighth annual Awards Show on Wednesday, June 4 at South Puget Sound Community College and organized by the Olympia & Beyond Sports. Emmanuel Nicasio (Sr., M) from the men’s soccer team was chosen Men’s Collegiate Sports Star of the Year. Alauna Carstens (Jr., Distance) from the women’s cross country and women’s track and field teams was chosen Women’s Collegiate Sports Star of the Year. Assistant Women’s Wrestling Coach John Lane was named Sports Contributor of the Year.

A total of eight Evergreen athletes and Coach Lane were nominated for Thurston County Sports Awards this year.

Nicasio, Max Baeder (So.) from men’s cross country and men’s track and field, and Jourdan Joseph (Sr., G) from men’s basketball were nominated for Men’s Sports Star of the Year. Carstens, Flor Parker Borrero (Jr.) from women’s wrestling, Izabelle Trefts (Jr.) from women’s cross country and women’s track and field, and Sydney VanNess (Sr., G/F) from women’s basketball were nominated for Women’s Sports Star of the Year.

Carstens, Allison DeBerry (Sr., G) from women’s basketball, Nicasio, and Parker Borero were nominated for Sports Moment of the Year. Coach Lane was nominated for Sports Contributor of the Year and Thurston County Sports Legend.

Evergreen’s winners at the 2025 Thurston County Sports Award

Emmanuel Nicasio (Sr., Men’s Soccer): Men’s Collegiate Sports Star of the Year

Nicasio led the Evergreen men’s soccer team with six goals and four assists for 16 total points during the 2024 season and was selected First Team All-Cascade Collegiate Conference. He was named Honorable Mention All-CCC in 2023 when he also was nominated for the Men’s Collegiate Sports Star of the Year. Nicasio was difficult to defend and was a key offensive player for the Geoducks.

In his two seasons at Evergreen, Nicasio played in and started 30 games and contributed seven goals and five assists. This past fall, he scored the game-winning goal with four seconds left in a 2-1 home victory over Northwest University on Sept. 27, 2024. Later, he earned a three-goal hat trick against Rocky Mountain College on Oct. 18, 2024. Nicasio was a team captain for the Geoducks. He has signed a contract to play semi-professional soccer for the FC Olympia Artesians.

Alauna Carstens (Jr., Women’s Cross Country, Women’s Track and Field): Women’s Collegiate Sports Star of the Year

Carstens has received multiple conference and national honors for her accomplishments in track and field and cross country. She has earned NAIA All-American five times in five different races:  the marathon, cross country, 3,000 meters in indoor track and field, plus 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters in outdoor track and field.

In 2024-25, Carstens achieved NAIA All-American three times. She won the marathon in 2 hours, 47 minutes, and 4 seconds for the second-best time in NAIA history. She placed third in the 3,000-meter run in 9:43.40 at the NAIA Indoor Track and Field Championships, and was eighth in the outdoor 10,000-meter run in 35:47.91 at the NAIA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. She was named the USTFCCCA West Region Athlete of the Year for in NAIA indoor track and field.

Carstens has qualified for NAIA national meets six times in her career, including cross country, the marathon, indoor track, and outdoor track. During regular season competition this spring, she achieved the 14th-best NAIA indoor 5,000-meter run of all-time and the 18th-best NAIA outdoor 10,000-meter run of all-time.

She was recently chosen as Evergreen’s Female Athlete of the Year for 2024-25. She is the Cascade College Conference record holder in the marathon. She also owns nine Evergreen school records and broke many of her own school records in 2024-25. She was chosen CCC Athlete of the Week four times between indoor and outdoor track and field this year.

In addition, Carstens was named Academic All-CCC in cross country and track and field and was chosen as a Daktronics NAIA Scholar-Athlete in track and field in 2024-25. She was recently nominated for Academic All-District honors from the College Sports Communicators.

Carstens has been nominated twice for Women’s Collegiate Sports Star of the Year in Thurston County. She also was nominated in 2023-24, when Geoduck Nizhoni Tallman from the women’s wrestling team received the award.

John Lane (Assistant Coach, Women’s Wrestling): Sports Contributor of the Year

Lane was honored for his many contributions to Thurston County sports over the years. He coached at Olympia High School for 20 years and he coached at Tumwater High School for 15 years. He has spent the past two years as the assistant women’s wrestling coach at The Evergreen State College.

He has developed athletes into strong competitors as well as responsible and accountable adults. His positive energy and commitment to sports are two great qualities that have made him a key person in Thurston County athletics.

He played an important role in launching the Evergreen women’s wrestling program, which advanced wrestlers to the NAIA National Championships in both 2023-24 and 2024-25. The Geoducks have earned NAIA All-American three times. The team had its first Cascade Collegiate Conference individual champion this past season.

Lane has encouraged broader participation and community involvement in wrestling. He has stressed discipline, accountability, and teamwork throughout his career, which has led to a legacy of excellence.

On June 6, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted final approval of the House v. NCAA settlement—launching a new era for college athletics.

This ruling creates a foundation for greater stability, fairness, and opportunity for student-athletes—and affirms what we at Vanderbilt have long believed: transformation, when grounded in mission and values, creates opportunity.

As we continue to build the great university of the 21st century, we remain steadfast in our commitment to providing a championship-caliber student-athlete experience that integrates academic and athletic excellence and strengthens our One Vanderbilt community.

The newly formed College Sports Commission, led by Bryan Seeley—former MLB executive and a respected voice in sports law—and its partners, Deloitte and LBi Software, will be responsible for ensuring compliance and supporting institutions through this transition.

While the settlement offers a clearer, more structured path forward, we will continue to work with our legislative partners on potential federal solutions that can bring long-term stability and consistency to the college athletics landscape.

Key pillars of the new model include:

Revenue sharing: Beginning with the 2025–26 academic year, SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten institutions may share up to 22 percent of defined athletics revenue with student-athletes—estimated at up to $20.5 million per school.

Scholarship expansion: With scholarship limits removed, universities now have more flexibility to offer educational opportunities to a broader range of student-athletes across sports. Removing scholarship limits gives schools the flexibility to better support student-athletes and their education, while supporting the long-term success of broad-based sports programs. Current and immediately incoming student-athletes who may have been adversely impacted by roster limits will still have the opportunity to earn a roster spot.

NIL conditions: The new NIL Go platform, managed by the College Sports Commission and its partners, Deloitte and LBi Software, will streamline the reporting and approval process for third-party NIL agreements—enhancing transparency while protecting student-athletes’ eligibility.

Our recent launch of Vanderbilt Enterprises and the appointment of Markus Schreyer as CEO underscore our readiness to embrace innovative models that support excellence in education, research, and athletics.

We are also preparing for the financial responsibility that comes with this new model and remain focused on driving strategic initiatives like Vandy United and advancing the mission of Vanderbilt Athletics. With your support, we will continue to set the standard in this new era.

This is a defining time for college sports. Though much is changing, the essence of what athletics represent—community, growth, discipline, excellence—remains firmly intact.
We are ready to lead. And together, we will succeed.

Anchor Down!

Daniel Diermeier
Chancellor

Candice Storey Lee
Vice Chancellor for Athletics and University Affairs and Athletic Director

Students compete in Valorant, a multiplayer video game, in the Esport Lounge at the Bakke Recreation & Wellbeing Center, Photo by Xiaomeng Shen/UW–Madison

While esports isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think of athletics, there are a lot of skills that you need to be a good esports athlete.

“There is a big mental aspect of esports, but part of it is just mechanical skills, like how well you aim and stuff,” says UW sophomore Arsalan Ahmad, an officer for the Madison eSports Club. “Genetics plays a huge role in other sports, a lot of times it’s just ‘oh are you tall enough to play basketball.’ With esports there is a lot of adaptation, it’s not only that you have to grind, but you also have to adapt to changing metas (most effective tactics available) like traditional sports.”

Ahmad, who’s studying computer science and data science, competes on the club’s top team for Valorant.

Esports, or playing video games competitively, has grown rapidly into a global industry. Games like League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends and Counter-Strike have become some of the most popular, with their top athletes being treated like celebrities, complete with dedicated training facilities and top tier sponsorship deals.

UW–Madison has also started providing more opportunities and spaces for esports on campus. While UW doesn’t have a varsity-level esports team like some universities, student-led groups such as the Madison Esports Club offer competition across multiple games.

The Madison Esports Club first started off as a group of students who gathered to play popular games such as DOTA, Starcraft and Hearthstone. In early 2020 the organization was adopted under the University Recreation and Wellbeing as a Sports Club, bringing it more funding and opportunities to compete against other teams.

The organization hosts teams for specific games, such as League of Legends, Valorant and Call of Duty. But students in the club don’t have to compete on a team — they can just find groups of other students to play games for fun.

Since COVID, gaming and video games has become one of the largest entertainment industries in the world,” said club president Eddie Kustner. “It’s good to have more opportunities for people who enjoy video games to go out and meet other people who enjoy video games.”

The Madison Esports Club competes in a variety of collegiate competitions locally and on a more national scale, including the Big Ten league and the Wisconsin Esports Conference, which includes other colleges in Wisconsin. The Big Ten is offering competitions in Super Smash Bros and Overwatch for the Spring 2025 semester, and the Madison Esports team is competing in both.

Outside of the team itself, the Bakke Recreation and Wellbeing Center has opened up a dedicated Esports lounge fitted with computers optimized for gaming. Esports has also been offered as a part of intramural sports, with semester-long competitions and shorter tournaments.

“Fostering local competition is really good. Also just connecting with other students on campus,” says Arsalan Ahmad. “It’s a great way to socialize with other students, just like it is with other intramural sports.”

Kustner would like to see esports grow here. “We have an esports room and it’s great that we have that, that’s a great first step,” he says.

It can be difficult to convince up-and-coming esports athletes to compete on a collegiate level because the prime age for gaming is on the younger side. Most talented players make their professional debut before they even graduate from high school.

“The long-term goals are to support the team and to provide more opportunities for the community to grow. The most successful esports communities in college have a very strong social scene and they have physical areas where people want to come, which fosters community” Kustner says.

Written by Serena Wang

Link to original story: https://news.wisc.edu/the-growth-of-esports-at-uw-madison/